


The Space Between

by Safiyabat



Series: SPN Season 11 Episode Tags [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode 11.01 Coda, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 14:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4963597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 11.01, "Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire."  Sam's thoughts between being attacked by the rabid nurse and the phone call with Dean.  **Spoilers**</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to do at least a drabble for every new episode. We'll see how long I stick with it.

Sam watched as the creatures backed away from him. He couldn’t properly call them people anymore. He’d seen what the… infection did to them. They didn’t have control of themselves anymore; their cognitive function wasn’t much better than a dog’s. They’d sniffed him to identify his infection status, for crying out loud. He’d have liked to cure them, to get them back to the state they’d been in before he and Dean broke the world (again, his brain helpfully supplied), but he couldn’t quite think of them as human. 

And in a few short hours he’d be one of them. 

How long did he have? Three hours? Four? He could already feel something happening to his body, something shifting and changing inside of him. Of course, it wasn’t exactly a new sensation for him, was it? Duct tape and safety pins, and something or other was always slipping. 

He’d taken a chance. He’d decided to try to draw off the enemy and buy Dean and his friend time to save the baby, the sacrificial lamb to Dean’s savior once again. The problem with being the sacrificial lamb, he supposed, was that lambs got slaughtered.

Sam barricaded himself into the supply closet. The end might be inevitable, he might not be able to control how he went out, but he could control what he did with the time he had left. His body had been stolen from him too often for him to just yield it up like the first fruits at the Lord’s Table. This infection wasn’t Meg, and it wasn’t Lucifer, and it wasn’t Gadreel and it wasn’t Crowley. He couldn’t avoid losing himself, but he could ensure that his body didn’t harm others before it gave out. 

Any more “others,” he reminded himself. All of this – the infection, the Darkness, all of it, was down to him. He hadn’t said the words to the spell, he’d been kind of busy with Dean trying to kill him at the time, but he’d set those wheels in motion. And sure, he hadn’t known about the Darkness. He couldn’t have known. By the time anyone had seen fit to tell him it had been too late, but he couldn’t have known killing Lilith would release Lucifer and that was still all on him too, right?

He sat down against a wall of supplies. He’d kind of thought, when Dean killed Death instead of Sam, that he’d have a little more time to patch things up with Dean than a couple of hours. Maybe he shouldn’t have, though. He’d gotten what he wanted out of that whole scenario. Dean accepted that he was a good man. He shrugged off the blame for the Mark of Cain; he wouldn’t walk through life drowning in guilt.

Sam knew a little too much about that to wish that on anyone else.

He rubbed at his bruised and battered face. God, he was tired. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep and getting into a fight to the death with his brother was apparently exhausting. Maybe he could just sleep through the infection? They could put it on his tombstone: “Sam Winchester: Only Darkness Rabies Victim To Sleep Through Infection.” 

He’d never had a tombstone before. Never had a grave before, or a pyre. He wondered what it would be like, or if Dean would just leave him here like he should. He hadn’t sent him off with the girl and the baby so he could turn his ass around and come back for his no-good brother.

How much air was in this closet, anyway?

It was a stupid thought. The closet was neither small nor airtight. He’d turn long before he ran out of air.

He ran his fingers through his hair and laughed at himself. He’d really done it this time. At least the poison in his veins didn’t make him immune from this, the way it had from Croatoan. When the rabid nurse or whatever she’d been had attacked him and splashed her lifeblood onto him in a grotesque parody of Azazel’s baptism he’d briefly flashed back to that time up in River Pass, Oregon, when they’d been holed up in that clinic. But no, apparently Sam was not immune to this.

That probably shouldn’t have made him as happy as it did, but Sam figured he was beyond what “should” make him happy at this point. The fact that he was human enough to die from something like this merited a fucking ticker tape parade.

Dean would worry. Probably. No, Dean would worry. He’d killed Death because of Sam. Right? Dean hadn’t wanted Sam to go off and play bait; he wouldn’t be okay with losing Sam like this. Not if he’d been willing to pull that stunt with Gadreel, after all. He would care. Part of Sam hoped that some new crisis would spring up wherever the hell Dean had taken the pretty cop and keep him good and distracted until Sam was long past resurrecting, until everyone in this town had fallen over dead and wasn’t able to lift a finger against him. 

Sam couldn’t tell him. Much as he might want some kind of connection – some kind of final message or anything as he looked his end in the eye – Sam couldn’t tell him. Dean would rush back, whether spurred by brotherly feeling or by concerns about Sam’s competence, and he’d die too. The world needed Dean to fix the Darkness. The world needed a savior. 

At least Sam had done his part. Sam had gotten Dean out of town, to live and fight another day. He closed his eyes. Now was not the time to panic. He had to think of what to tell Dean when he called. 


End file.
